Sol | Storyboards | Crash Scene Pass 1

Here are the storyboards I drew for the animatic I posted a few days ago. I figured I'd put up the stills, because there's something valuable in evaluating them on their own. Compared to my previous boards, these are a definite big improvement. Still, I feel like I could improve on overall direction and incorporating more dramatic cameras and interesting story points. These are arranged slightly out of order, but the general gist is there.The correct order is in the animatic. Hope you enjoy these! I think my favorite panel is the one where the squid is looking up after not being crushed by the spaceship like "Huh?! I'm still alive?!"

No Shave This! | First XGen Hair Render

In Effects Class we are learning XGen, which is a plugin for Maya that you can use to build hair, grass, fur and other large amounts of detailed objects. For our first assignment with XGen, we had to build a hairstyle for the Malcolm rig and then make it dynamic. Of course, in the spirite of the impending No Shave November, I built a beard (neard, really!) instead of a hairstyle. This is a render I did in Vray 3 using a default gray hair shader and skin shader.

Sol | Concept Sketches

This is some concept art I sketched out today for SOL. Actually starting to really get into this digital painting thing, I'm always scared to work with color, but I think these things are starting to look okay. Really diggin' the floating rocks powered by energetic ore veins/chunks. Gonna be pretty awesome. Excite!

Sol | Crash Scene Animatic v001

This is an animatic I'm working on for our junior class co-lab game project, Sol. Our hero, Spero, flies into Musa's atmosphere only to get zapped by an alien weapon. When his engine fails he crash lands, narrowly avoids missing a bewildered and slightly terrified alien squid. Haven't done storyboarding since last year but I think these are a step up from what I've done previously. This is only one segment of a more complete sequence but it's coming along. Still plenty of room for improvement but communicating a story visually is a challenge and super fun for me. Hope you enjoy it!

giraffe.sketch

My friend wanted to me to draw a giraffe. I've never drawn a giraffe before, but I ended up with this guy. The sketch went through a ton of iterations before it got to this, even then some of it is pretty awful, haha. But I think it turned out okay and my friend was amused, so that was pretty fun.

Drawjam 10.16.14

So I haven't drawn anything in a really, really long time, at least nothing that I've put on my blog. The first image I referenced another image from one of my favorite artists, I don't take credit for the design but I was trying to match his line style, which is full of life and weight. The second guy is one I drew from a photo reference, all original there. I really suck at drawing mouths and this one actually turned out okay.

Rigid Body Simulation | Instanced Particles

I pumped out a quick render of my window shatter scene. Since the last version I posted, I also built a particle system to add in more pieces of glass with smaller bits and more detail. It really helps fill in the scene. I need to build more particles systems and learn more about them. I also rendered with some motion blur and depth of field to help push the perspective. 

Perspective Marker Sketch

Just a quick sketch I did with some of my new Micron markers. I've never used markers before, and it's a challenge since there's no erasing, but I definitely am in love with fluidity of the lines and the expressive weight one can get from them. Another thing I suck at is perspective, so I tried throwing down a grid and building up something from that. Fenceposts receding always seem to work for some reason.